I'm in Austin and I have a very large loquat tree. I'm not sure how tall, but my house is a regular ranch style and the tree is quite a bit taller than my house and the drip line is very wide. I noticed a month or so ago that some leaves near the top were turning brown and then I was out of town and it feels like all of a sudden a huge section of the tree is dying. I haven't climbed up in there to examine it, but it looks like several branches are dying--and the blight or whatever it is seems to be spreading fast. I really don't want to lose this big beautiful tree. Do you have any idea what this could be and what I can do about it? I could take some photos if that would help.
Oh no! Yes, please send photos. I'll give them a look and see what we can figure out. Regardless though, the best thing to do is going to be to prune out the affected area. It could just be physical damage, or some other easy to deal with problem. I'd be happy to give you some guidance on doing that. I look forward to hearing back from you.
Thank you for your response. Yes, I am getting the dead parts cut out as soon as it stops raining here. Meanwhile, here are some photos. One close up of dead leaves, one shot of whole tree showing dead section at top, and one close up of dead main branch.
Sorry those photos are sideways. I thought I had fixed them so they would stay upright. Anyway, since I first posted my query, I have looked more closely at the tree, and there is one of the main branches that's dead, and all the branches coming off it, except for one, are also dead. Then there's another spot in the tree that has one small dead branch. The main branch that's dead has weird-looking bark, as shown in the photo.
Thanks for the photos. The dead area is much larger than I pictured it. Yes, the leaves are dead because the branch is dead, which means it's no longer attached to the "plumbing" in the roots that send water to it.
The trunk photo is a little blurry, but the damage doesn't appear to be anything that would have caused the entire branch to die. Hmmm, very curious.
My best recommendation is still to prune out the dead growth and watch closely to see if there is any future damage before it spreads too far. It really doesn't look like any sort of disease issue. But even if it were, the recommendation would be the same: remove the infected tissue and make sure the cultural situation in the environment does not encourage infestation. That would be: enough water, but not so much that the soil stays overly wet. Don't over-fertilize.
Keep me posted! You can give us a call if you like. 512.854.9600. I will be out of the office until 11/24/14, then we're out quite a bit for the holidays. But Master Gardeners are available to chat a few days a week.
Dear Daphne,
Thank you for your response. I have cut out the dead part, but I see there are dead leaves in other parts of the tree. I'll keep cutting out any dead parts and see what happens, I guess. I haven't fertilized the tree at all. Do you think I should? And I don't think it's either too dry or overwatered. I've been watering it pretty much the same way for 23 years since I planted it as a little shoot.
Well, poo. I was certainly hoping that the damage was limited to one spot.
Although you could fertilize your tree (the spring would be best), not having done so to this point would not have caused your tree to show this type of damage, nor will fertilizing help combat this particular issue. Lack of nutrition materializes as yellow or brown leaves, but doesn't manifest as one entire section of the tree dying back.
Is there any chance that something damage the roots of the tree, especially on the side with the largest die-back? Or did you by chance use an herbicide or a "weed and fee" type fertilizer? Those would both cause damage and could produce these symptoms.
If you would like to send a less-blurry picture of the bark, and any other relevant photos, I'll pass this question along to my plant pathology colleagues and see if they see something I'm missing.
I haven't used any chemicals or fertilizer anywhere on the lawn or around that tree. I will get some better photos tomorrow and send to you.
Glad we can rule out herbicide damage. Let's see what we can do with you new photos. I'll be unavailable for most of Friday, but I'll watch for them this weekend.
I was waiting for sun to get a better photo but it never showed up yesterday, and now it's raining. And I WON'T complain about rain. Here's another photo I took that same day as the one that's too blurry. Maybe it will be a little clearer. The sun is supposed to come out for a while tomorrow, so I'll try again then. Anyway, this is a photo of that same main branch just from another angle.
Thanks for the new photo! Yes, the weather this weekend was not good for getting good pictures of anything. At this point, I'm going to reassign this question to one of our plant pathology experts and get them to weigh in. Our office phone number here in Austin is 512.854.9600
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if you have any follow up questions after they get back to you.
Dear Daphne,
Thanks for your attention to my poor loquat tree.
Yours,
Kam Magor
One other thing I just thought of. Two crape myrtle trees and a lantana bush in the yard that have mold. They are about 20 feet from the loquat trunk and maybe 10 feet from the tree's drip line. I don't see any signs of mold on the loquat but thought I'd mention that, just in case.
I cannot tell much details from the photos but I think that there may be a couple of things going on.
The pattern on the bark suggest some kind of canker. If the coloration in the photo is accurate - I would suspect something like a cytospora canker. This is a fungal problem which tends to occur on some trees and starts via some damage. So the symptoms you see is probably due to some damage done months (even years) earlier.
However, looking at the pattern (wideangle photo) would suggest localized branch problem. Trace back from the dead part - see how far you see the "funky" bark. If it stops before the trunk then pruning should (hopefully) stop the problem from progressing. That means - looking for the origin of the problem and then pruning out the affected branch.
Along with this, see if you can identify any cultural situations which may have contributed to potential physical damage of the tree.
Thank you for your response. I have pruned the dead main branch. It started where it branched off from the main trunk. The tree looks really weird now--lopsided--because that involved cutting off basically one whole side of the top part of the tree. Did you notice that I mentioned that a crape myrtle tree and a big lantana in that same yard have fungus? Would there be a connection? The fungus has been on the crape myrtle for several years, but this is the first year it's been on the lantana. Sometimes I spray with a fungicide, but I didn't this year. That fungus doesn't kill the plants, though. Would you like me to send photos of the crape myrtle and lantana? I don't know what you mean by "cultural situations" which may have contributed to damage of the tree.
The crape myrtle and lantana may be unrelated. When you mentioned mold - I suspect that you are referring to dark, black stuff which is commonly called sooty mold. These are opportunist fungi growing on excretion of insect (usually a leafhopper or aphids). Looks bad but rarely kills the plant.
Cultural situation refers to both environmental impacts (such as drainage issues, soil grade change issue, etc...) or mechanical issues ( physical damage caused by chronic events such as structure or branch rubbing/abrasion) - these are things that could contribute to a way for the pathogen to enter the plant. These are things that can be changed or practiced differently to reduce future risk.
Thank you so much for your quick response. I've thought about the things you mention, and I haven't used any chemicals on the house or lawn, there hasn't been any change to the drainage situation or soil grade, and the irrigation set up hasn't changed. Maybe a branch could have been rubbing against the house or possibly the roof. How would the pathogen travel through the tree? If a smaller upper branch had been rubbing against the house of roof and there was an opening for a pathogen to enter, could the pathogen then travel down the smaller branch to the larger branch it was growing off and then infect that larger branch plus all the smaller branches going off it?
Yes. it could but not very likely.
A friend of mine who has a tree-cutting and trimming business but who is not an expert on tree diseases looked at the photos and suggested that the problem might be fire blight. I haven't googled that yet, but what do you think?
Not likely to be caused by Erwinia amylovora (fireblight) based on images submitted.
If confirmation is desired, it is suggested that a sample be submitted for analysis. Sample can be submitted to the Texas Plant Disease Diagnostic Lab. Submission forms and fee schedule can be found on our website at
http://plantclinic.tamu.eduThanks for all your help. I've gotten all the diseased part removed from the tree, so I'll just see what happens now, I guess. The poor thing is now SO lopsided. Looks kind of ridiculous. Also, now when I google "cytospora canker," I see images of MY tree. I was looking at the images and thought, "Yes, that must be what it is because these photos look JUST LIKE what I have on my tree . . . Wait a minute, that looks EXACTLY like my tree . . . Oh, that IS my tree."
